Jumpstart Social Marketing on Your Campus

Fall is an important time for admissions offices with recruitment on everyone’s mind. This last fall semester, I had the opportunity to work in the Simpson College Admissions Department as an Undergraduate Assistant for Social Media and Web.

While Simpson’s admissions counselors were off on school visits and communicating with prospective students in person, my role was to effectively engage potential students through Simpson Admissions’ social channels. I developed a social strategy in which I shared images and information about Simpson College’s upcoming events and student life and implemented that strategy through Hootsuite to generate amazing results.

Never log in to multiple channels again. Hootsuite is a social media management system that integrates all your social channels, including Instagram, into one platform to simplify your social marketing. This convenient system allows you to post to multiple channels with the click of a button and schedule hundreds of posts in advance. Hootsuite offers three management plans, which include features such as analytics reports, vanity URLs, and more.

For Simpson, I was able to utilize the free plan to post on three social channels: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Never go weeks without posting again. It’s important to be active on all of your social channels. Like most things, this is easier said than done… or is it?

Develop a social strategy with a content calendar. Plan out your posts for the entire month and schedule them in advance on Hootsuite to ensure activity.

I find that it’s easier to develop a social strategy by having themed days. For example, at Simpson I used:

#MondayMotivation

#TourTuesday

#Choose Simpson, which was posted every Thursday, featuring a student ambassador. This theme received the most engagement overall. Prospective students love getting a glimpse of student life, and current students enjoy seeing their friends promote their school.

Never miss an opportunity to engage again. There’s a lot of student-generated content already out there for you to use and augment. Discover your top influencers. Retweet your students and share information about student organization events.

Hootsuite even allows you to set up hashtag and mention streams so you can monitor what people are saying about you. Never miss a chance to talk to potential students who tweet about #SimpsonCollege instead of @SimpsonAdmiss. Check your stream regularly and start engaging.

Jumpstart a social marketing strategy on your campus and start seeing results like these in your analytics reports: